[DF] Placing areas of different mana in Dungeon Fantasy

[Taneli]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

The more I think about this, the more it feels like Suspend Mana and Drain Mana are absolutely essential to wizardly magic working as intended. One interesting thing about these spells is that Drain Mana in particular is vastly cheaper than most other methods if you want lasting protection for an area (the one partial exception I see is Pentagram, and because its cost scales with area rather than radius, it's really only cheaper if you're protecting a single hex). In a world where wizardly magic is the only type, I expect small areas that have been subject to Drain Mana would be extremely common and serve a variety of purposes: jail cells, "safe rooms", or simply places where people can talk with a guarantee they won't be scried upon. Dungeon Fantasy complicates things because Drain Mana will only protect you against one of several types of hostile magic, but the spell might at least be popular among clerics who want to maximize their "home field advantage" in their temples, or at least certain sections thereof.

Those spells are pretty ugly to cast, though. A critical failure with Suspend Mana loses you one level of Magery for 2d days, and has a change to lose it forever, while a critical failure with the Drain Mana just loses you that level of Magery forever.

Also, I'm not entirely sure if the Suspend Mana and Drain Mana on the DF Cleric's list are supposed to affect mana or sanctity, probably mana. If they have a critical failure with those spells, they're going to lose a level of PI, that's for sure.

But yeah, in a place like Yrth, there's bound to be plenty of no mana places around as the result of mages of the old draining places for their own use (and maybe using a chunk of their power in the process).